Lots of things on my mind….
This Easter I am taking all most the entire day off from the farm to spend time with my family and have our traditional Easter dinner at my sister’s house. After I tend to the milking of the cows and a few other minor chores are done I’ll be off and running. It is supossed to be a great weather day and I’m really looking forward to time away from the drudgery of the farm.
May you and yours have a blessed Easter Holiday.
After yesterday’s game, a few of us went for a few drinks, shot some pool and got caught up on what everyone was up to these days. I haven’t really been kept in the loop with these guys and was eager to hear all their stories and share a few laughs before heading back to the homestead once again.
With finance and the economy being the way it is today, life is becoming more and more difficult for so many of us, it was nice to just get away from all the “hot” topics that are being discussed each day, so we kept the conversations on the lighter side and no one even wanted to talk about politics and all the heart ache that we are all experiencing due to our governments wasteful overspending and the challenges that Obama now is facing.
My one pal, Doug has gotten totally into the sport of skateboarding and had several good stories that kept us entertained. He is looking to be in real good shape and he had kicked butt all day long during the earlier paintball games. Made all of us look bad in comparison.
My old college roommates have been trying to get me to join them in a paintball game sometime really soon. We used to have a great time together when we were in college playing paintball on a regular basis. It was great exercise and loads of fun! After the game we would go to the local pub for a bite to eat and hang out and party the rest of the evening.
I’m not even sure where my old paintball equipment is nowadays; I think I lost it along the way. If I’m going to get involved in playing again I’m going to have to think about buying it. The Ultimate Paintball store at pntball.com website is where I’ll be going to buy my new equipment if I decide to take the plunge and get back into it. They have free shipping and the best prices on the Internet. I see that the tippmann a5 set is on sale at half price right now, so that is a pretty strong incentive to pick it up now!
These wonderful High Intensity Discharge lights that they have available these days are a truly a most useful tool, especially for boaters that find themselves in need of a good lighting system, such as my brother-in-law found himself in just the other day.
He had received some nice HID boat spotlights, by Magnalight for Christmas and some other boating accessories as well, that he was very anxious to try out and did, on a day that most people wouldn’t venture onto the water on, but as I stated he was a bit anxious. He got a late start and ended up out farther than he calculated on and it got dark quickly on him and he ended up losing his way, all alone, wet and cold. A good thing that he is an experienced water man because it could have ended up real ugly.
He certainly got the opportunity to use his newly acquired spotlight and got home safe and sound, just his ego was bruised a bit, but he has a sense of humor and has made a good entertaining story out of the whole deal that will be told for years to come.
Well, even though I have a little tree, I haven’t finished decorating it yet. I ran into a little bit of a snag when I opened the boxes of ornaments. These are the same ornaments that have decorated the family tree for many decades; perhaps even generations. I found that every ornament that I saw brought back powerful memories of my family, and the sense of loss from having both of my parents taken from me so early in my life, such a short time ago, made it difficult to actually decorate the tree.
I know I’ll get through it, and the tree WILL get decorated, but it is going to take a long time to do it! I think now I have a better understanding of how emotional my mother would get at Christmas time, when she would decorate the tree. Her mother had made many of the ornaments, and so has she. It truly IS a family tree, and right now there isn’t much family around to enjoy it. Maybe it’s time I started thinking about taking on a family of my own and stop rattling around by myself in this big old farmhouse.
My sister has been after me to go ahead and give her the grandfather clock that has been sitting in the same spot in this old house for as long as the house has been here, our parents treasured this wonderful piece that was made by the famous Howard Miller Company so long ago. I have mixed feelings about moving it and allowing it to leave the place that my father so lovingly placed it for my mother, way before any of us kids were even born, but I know that it would be in good hands with her at her place. She has a place all ready picked out and ready, just waiting for me to give her the go ahead.
Too bad I can’t talk her into buying one of her own to pass down, I know of a great company that has a great selection of grandfather clocks that I found one day while surfing the net, looking at the different styles and varieties that can be found online. Looking to see if I could find one that looks just like the one here at the farm, at 1-800-4clocks.com they have more wonderful old and new time pieces that I spent a good amount of timing gazing at that really peaked my interest, but none that looked exactly like our family’s antique grandfather clock, close but no cigar.
They even offer an interesting blog here that I took the time to check out and found some good information and was entertaining as well. One in particular that I found useful spoke about maintenance for grandfather clocks that I was glad to read and pick up some tips from, it’s all good.
Spent most of the day looking for the cans of degreasers that I swore were kept in the grey out building behind the garage. I always seem to be looking for something around here. If I didn’t know any better I would swear that some one is playing jokes on me, but considering that I am the only one that lives here and that I rarely have any visitors I really don’t think that that is the case. My sister tells me that she thinks that it is our late father messing with my head like he used to like to do to me while he was still on this earth. Or that I am just getting old and burned out, which is the explanation that I believe to be true.
I really could use a vacation, but I can’t leave this house and the farm to run it’s self for even two days in a row for heaven’s sake. A week away from here, some where nice and warm by the water sounds wonderful, but I don’t see that happening any time soon unless I can find some one to take over all the things that need to be done around the old homestead and I don’t know even one person that I could rely on to due that for me.
In the mean time I guess I’ll need to take a trip into town tomorrow and buy a new can of degreaser. As much as I am burned out from being here all alone all the time I really hate going into town.
My sister’s husband and his co-workers are always getting involved with some sort of community service or a fundraising activity. Like at Christmas, they all pitched in and adopted a local low income family to supply all kinds of goods to help them get through the Holiday Season easier and they say that you can always find a booklet or two or pamphlets in the break room for people to order things for some type of fundraising for their kids from school, church, or sports.
I think that it is a very good positive attitude to have when there are so many people out there that need help. Their latest approach is in a lupus fundraising attempt, in which they have gone “high tech” and have enlisted the assistance of the World Wide Web through a company called Firstgiving, the link to their home page being Firstgiving.com. Firstgiving makes it possible for anybody to raise money on-line for any cause that they see fit to. You actually go on-line and make your own on-line fundraising page that can then be emailed to people to enlist them into giving an on-line donation. I find this whole idea fascinating and couldn’t wait to bring it up on our PC at home. And when I did bring up the site I really was impressed with what I saw, and I would encourage anybody to check it out also, it is a site that is full of good positive things, we need more of these, don’t you agree.
The reason for choosing this horrible disease by the name of Lupus, apparently is because one of the top management guys has a teen-age daughter inflicted with this health issue and he is very popular with all of the workers and they want to show him their respect by coordinating this fundraiser because of his daughter. I wish them all the luck in the world and give them nothing less than respect that they so highly deserve for their efforts.
My other nephew has just hit the teen years of his life and has changed from the cute little boy that loved Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers, into a total rebel against anyone and everyone. A big part of this change in him, I believe has to do with the music he had been introduced to by his older brother, which is mainly Rap.
I don’t understand why parents let their kids listen to music that promotes disrespect to most women and then expect them to stick with innocence. We should all try to make a difference in this matter, or else our newest generation will live life with the wrong outlook on what life is really about and live in a fantasy or dream world for most of their lives.
Guest written by our friend Gladys Fuentes
My oldest daughter asked us last night if she could ride her bike to school this year like the big kids. I almost choked on the water I was drinking and demanded to know why she wanted to do this. She feels that since her sister will be starting preschool, she will be a baby. My oldest feels like she is a big girl and wants to ride her bike like a big girl. Of course, she is too young to ride to school by herself. I tried to calmly explain this to her but she was not listening. She wanted to be a big girl. I was at a lost for words and suffering a headache. I did not want to have this conversation. So my husband went to www.allHOMESECURITY.com to see if he could find something to read to her. She seems to trust anything that comes off of the computer. I can see that being a problem later, but for now it might work. Whatever he read to her seemed to work. She is content with being at the bus stop with her sister.